Educational Choice or Academic Slavery?
If ignorance is slavery,
then knowledge is a railroad to freedom.
Industrial research verifies that one 
of the most accurate predictors of career success is a strong English
vocabulary and the ability to communicate well in writing and speech.
According to research published in In
Motion Magazine (September 8, 2002), the Civil Rights Project at Howard University
(March, 2001), and Education
Week (Oct 30, 2002), Black students are at risk in most
inner-city schools. Tragically,
more than 480,000 school age minority children have a working vocabulary
of less than 50 words. Graduation
and meaningful employment for those children is probably unattainable.
In fact, some inner cities show more Black youth bailing
out of public schools than students who are graduating.
In some cities, 60 to 69% of Black males never earn diplomas!
The regular public school system is struggling to address
the domestic and academic circumstances of African-American youth.
Fault probably rests with homes, churches and schools, but
the fact is that too many Black males are relocating from classrooms
to jails because literacy, graduation and employment are elusive.
By the 2002 congressional elections, 25% of all eligible
Black voters were disenfranchised from voting because of felony
convictions!
Most public school districts report annual dropout rates at about 1.5%,
leaving communities with the false belief that few Black students are
really dropouts. Concurrently,
juvenile incarceration for Blacks is higher than Whites from the same
school districts. Another
statistic relevant to dropouts is geographical location of residences of
at-risk minority children. The
average Black inner-city teenager experiences his entire school years
within an 18-mile radius, where he may live in as many as five different
residences and attend as many as three different schools.
Within that 18-mile radius, more than half of all minority at-risk
students never graduate. In Detroit, 69% never experience graduation. Pastors,
educators, legislators and parents must ask the question, “How can all
of those schools report only a 1.5% annual dropout rate, yet lose over 50%
of their students after grade seven?”
That is a significant question, because most public school systems
claim that the high rate of non-graduates (now labeled as “leavers”)
is caused by transfers to other school districts rather than dropouts
within the district. Demographic
statistics, however, reflect that transfers are within the 18-mile radius
in which all schools are losing over half their minority students.
Public schools are obviously a major factor impacting the
opportunity for African-American youth to attain adulthood in an
employable condition. Negative
school experiences give way to temptations to commit crimes in order to
obtain prestige among peers. The
shortest route between home and jail could be an aborted trip through
local public schools. The
obvious conclusion is that African-American juvenile dropouts are
basically unemployable because they are illiterate in reading, writing,
and math, and are anemic in core values attributed to inadequate male
leadership at school and home. Unemployability
causes career and social frustrations directly related to the lack of
money which most African-American males perceive to be the basis of social
status and success.
This scenario is exacerbated
by the single parent status of many African American urban homes.
A single parent mom simply cannot contribute the kind of
financial support demanded by the teenager’s appetite for peer prestige.
Moreover, the absence of a biological father means that no
resident male role model goes to 
work each day to generate income.
Absence of the father every evening leaves the teen with
another empty spot: inadequate moral training and discipline to
control social appetites, and insufficient spending money.
Black teens are often left to themselves to find money and
purpose in life by whatever means are available on the street.
The normal recourse for unemployable youth is criminal behavior:
robbery, theft, burglary, drug dealing, or prostitution.
These are horrible consequences of a culture that has sidestepped
its responsibility to address the moral and academic needs of Black
children. The public
school system is usually the only social institution through which
most youth are prepared for adulthood.
The average African-American urban male does not get prepared
for life through church or a dad’s leadership.
Consequently, local public schools become the only real opportunity
for Black youth to get character training and academics.
Were Harriet Tubman alive today, she would be compelled to
help Black youth escape America’s 21st Century slave
masters over Black children—low-performing public schools which
shackle students with moral anemia and academic illiteracy.
Black youth need a new
underground railway to freedom from inadequate public school programs.
The system of institutionalized slavery was broken by people like
Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and H.B. Stowe.
These courageous people and others like them stared at the Goliath
of slavery and determined that Blacks would not remain victims of status
quo plantation slavery. They,
like William Wallace in Scottish history, bellowed “freedom” and
emancipated themselves. Like
Patrick Henry in the Virginia House of Burgesses, they cried, “Give me
liberty or give me death!” Like
Martin Luther King, they proclaimed “I have a dream.”
The means of erasing
illiteracy and disproportionate rates of incarceration for
African-Americans is that they demand, and actively work toward,
educational choice that will provide quality options to low performing
public schools. Voucher
programs like those established in Ohio, Florida, and Colorado
are pushing open doors of opportunity for Blacks trapped in
underperforming public schools. Quality
charter schools are available to African-Americans in 37 states.
The hour is too late for
African-Americans to wait passively for educational opportunities to be
created by legislatures. Remedy must be initiated
from grass roots activists equipped with knowledge and persistence to
create educational choices rather than remain in bondage to academic
slavery.
Ronald E. Johnson, Ph.D.
President, CEO
Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum |
